Wednesday, August 12, 2009

Ok first before we even discuss totems I need to stress that the Gem Faqts is incomplete for 3.2 as there have been a number of mixed colored gems added. For the most part, the gem chart is accurate and the rest of the information on how to max gem your toon still holds true.Moving on;

The new totems interface sucks ass (for now at least).The only thing I like is the ability to drop all 4 totems at once, other than that things are cumbersome and NOT an improvement.Previously, I used Totem Timers addon.

Quite simply you hover your mouse over an elemental school (earth, fire, water, air) and all the totems in that school would pop up. You would left click on a totem to cast it, but even better, you would right click on a totem to add it to the "All in One" totem macro.I'd pick a lineup of totems and mash the Totem macro as I approached melee range and wouldnt really waste any GCD time other than having to refresh the totems 5mins later.99% of the time I run Imp. Windfury totem, Imp. Strength of Earth, Healing totem and Imp. Flametongue (to boost buffs) and most of the time pull up flametounge to drop Magma Totem.If I had to run mana spring, or cleansing totem, or a resist totem I can simply right click the totem I want and it's added to "the macro".

Nowadays if I want to add a mana spring or a cleansing totem to my totem lineup, I have to click drag the icon for said totem onto my new totem bar, and this is where the problem is....Where is the totem icon gonna come from? I have to root around in my spellbook because I have no desire to have a huge grid of every available totem on my screen just so I can click-drag them over to the new totem bar situationally.

I do have the situational totems on my action bar so I can mash numpad7 for a quick grounding totem, or mash ctrl+num4 to drop a stoneclaw totem when I am questing on foot and too lazy to kill something, and I could drag over my cleansing totem onto the new totem bar for use in a lineup, but then if I need to refresh it in a hurry, it won't be there on my memorized keyboard hotkey ( I like to refresh cleansing as needed, rather than wait on the pulse if the timing was bad on a poison)

I really don't see a need for multiple "Totem sets", in my mind there is only one "totem set"-the one I am dropping.As such I only use Call of the Ancestors, I have no use for the other 2 calls other than being lazy and keeping my resto totem lineup saved on one of them.

Everything will be fine when Totem Timers addon incorporates their right click feature into creating a "Call of XX" or allows the totem icons to be click-dragged the same manner as the icons in the spellbook. Until then I shall QQ.

2 comments:

Weird - my default bars come with a little menu that expands upwards so that you can pick a totem to drop - doesn't yours have this on your screen? I don't have to go into my spell book to allocate totems to a set and in fact have removed them totally from my bars (I do still keep totem timers though because it has some cool functionality that the default bars are missing.